The invention relates to a system for allocating service resources to customers.
In many retail establishments, such as, travel agencies, auto repair centers, and medical practices, to name but a few, the customer's experience often matches what one would expect in an overcrowded bakery. When the customer enters the establishment, he discovers that a number of other customers have preceded him and are still waiting their turn to be served. If leaving to return another time is not an option he wishes to exercise, he must then find the end of the line that has formed and join the others to wait his turn. If the number of customers who have preceded him is large, his wait can be aggravatingly long. And if there are too few chairs for everybody, a long wait can become tiring. Often adding to his aggravation are those one or two individuals who invariably seem to appear and ignore that some people may be ahead of them. All in all, by the time the customer's turn has arrived, it is not unusual to find him in a very unpleasant mood.
Of course, some techniques are used to reduce the aggravation associated with the long wait in line. One such technique involves a ticket machine that dispenses to each new customer a number indicating his position in line. When a sales person becomes available to serve another customer, a number is displayed to notify the next customer in line that service is now available for him. This helps assure that people are served in order of their arrival and permits customers to relax a little more during the wait. However, even with such techniques, the customer typically must resign himself to having to sacrifice a usually unforeseeable amount of his valuable time remaining continually attentive to his place in line and waiting until his turn finally comes.